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Outdoor Rooms: Save the World With a Smile on Your Face

April 22nd, 2010 by Clarke

This article by Clarke Snell was originally published in the New Life Journal.

Given a choice, most of us would rather be outside. I mean, most people imagine vacations on the beach or walking through the woods, not sitting in a room with a TV on, an air conditioner humming, and the shades drawn. That’s not surprising because if you get down to basics, our home is the earth. Sure, you live in a house, but everything inside originated outside. Air, water, food, fuel, fabrics, even all of that plastic crap and junk mail. Origin: outside.

In fact, the whole concept of a place called “inside” is really an abstraction. We are a part of the outdoors, of the self-sustaining ecosystem of the earth, and as such we need a constant and intimate connection to the outside in order to survive and flourish. The only question is how we go about making that connection. The trend over the last 50 years or so has been to focus on creating indoor environments that can dial in specific variables (air temperature, water temperature, light intensities, etc.) with fine levels of control. A building with a mechanical heating and cooling system and electric lights, for example, can theoretically create a consistent indoor environment regardless of what is going on outside. That can be a good thing. However, if applied mindlessly, this paradigm leads to exorbitant energy consumption with its consequent pollution and pillaging of finite natural resources. (Since about 40% of the energy we use as a country is consumed by our buildings, that’s quite a bit of pillaging.) This approach also sets the stage for the cubicle, bad air fresheners masking poor indoor air quality, the video-game/TV-addict-couch-potato-geek and a variety of other side effects of extreme separation from the outdoors.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not suggesting a return to the cave. Campfires are an extremely inefficient and polluting technology. A couple billion of them would be an environmental nightmare. All I’m proffering is that we expand the concept of where it is that we live. For example, we need to stop thinking of our houses as ending at the front door. For me, a house has three basic parts: indoor rooms, outdoor rooms, and the transitions between them. Outdoor rooms can be designed to be just as functional as indoor rooms. In fact, generally they mirror the uses of indoor rooms, allowing us to choose the best locale for a particular activity based on the weather. This layout can take a load off interior space while adding inexpensive outdoor space.

For example, a home office that combines an interior room with a private covered patio can allow the indoor portion to be much smaller. The same is true of kitchens, bedrooms, living rooms, even bathrooms in the right situation. The end result can be a smaller house with lower upfront cost, lower utility bills, and happier inhabitants who are spending more time outdoors while still going about their busy modern lives. Smaller buildings using less electricity and fuels also mean less pollution, fewer greenhouse gas emissions, and less dependence on foreign oil. As for existing buildings, adding outdoor rooms won’t make them smaller, but they’ll still benefit from considerably lower utility bills…you don’t need to heat or cool a building or run lighting when you’re outside.

Some of the hardships you might have to endure to reach these frugal and lofty goals are (1) sleeping outside under a ceiling fan on a screened porch off your bedroom; (2) cooking outdoors (five feet from your herb and greens garden) whenever you feel like it rather than waiting for that elusive “cookout”; (3) taking a private solar shower outdoors under an open sky (note to reader: don’t die without experiencing this!); and (4) typing those emails with the smell of flowers as a backdrop… It’s a hard job, but I say someone has to do it and it might as well be you.

Though many of us have experienced outdoor spaces that have elements of what I’m describing, most don’t. The reason usually is that they are being short-changed. Successful indoor rooms share basic components. They all have a floor, walls, and a roof, for example. They also all have a clear intended use that has been served through thoughtful design and careful follow-through in construction. Outdoor rooms are no different. The floor could be stones, the walls may include a bush, and the roof may prominently feature the sky, but the idea is the same: a collection of elements brought together to create a mood and support an activity. Outdoor rooms can be private, grandiose, playful, or solemn. They can be designed to maximize work productivity, encourage social interaction, or be a room of one’s own. In short, they can do anything an indoor room can do…just not in a blizzard.

Okay, so here’s my radical suggestion. Let’s enjoy ourselves immensely by spending more time outside; slash construction, maintenance and energy bills while doing it; AND cut pollution, carbon emissions, and consequently “save the world” in the bargain. All that’s standing in our way is the powerful aerosol air freshener lobby and some crazed X-Box geeks. Fight the power!

Next month: floors for outdoor rooms.

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To Deck or Not to Deck: Floors for Outdoor Rooms

April 22nd, 2010 by Clarke

This article was originally published in the New Life Journal.

Last month I sat down to write a column answering a question I get asked a lot: “What’s the best approach to building an environmentally conscious deck?” Instead, I ended up writing a preamble column introducing the concept of “outdoor rooms”.

The reason is that a deck is the floor of an outdoor room. Yes, even that rusty hibachi and those overturned plastic Wal-Mart chairs on that windswept tundra behind your house is a room, just not a very good one. Picture instead a living room with a door in the middle. On the tax map, half is “inside” the other “out”, but in reality it’s one big room that we migrate within based on the weather and our whim. Like the indoor part, the outdoor section has a floor, walls, and a roof. It’s a full-fledged, card-carrying room, part of the mansion of the outdoors. Versailles, the Acropolis, and a mighty redwood forest all with an internet connection and only 10 steps from the fridge.

For me, then, the first step in discussing decks is to place them in their context as the floor of an important room in your house. From that perspective here are my observations, opinions, and interpretive dance (sorry, for those of you not watching my webcam simulcast…you’ll have to check it out on YouTube.)

If you don’t design it, how can you know what to build?

Take a moment to imagine a room that you’d love to have. A bigger bathroom, a better kitchen, or a cozy study. I guarantee that your thoughts didn’t start with a rectangular floor of a defined dimension that you then imagined a room to fit around. Yet this is the process by which many outdoor rooms come into existence. A deck is built to an arbitrary dimension or simply to fit into a space and then…well, actually that’s it.

I say, forget the floor initially and decide what exactly the space is going to be used for. Is it public or private? Will you be cooking there? If so what? How much sun do you want? Do you want to encourage breezes or block the wind? How do you want to interact with rain? Is the outdoor room working with or embellishing an indoor room? Will this outdoor room interact with any other outdoor rooms? For example, a 2nd story deck automatically becomes the floor of an outdoor room below it, whether you want a room there or not. The difference between that space being a useless, dank eyesore and a useful, shady living room or outdoor workshop is simply the presence or absence of conscious design.

Size matters

One of the most basic tenets of green building is that “small is beautiful”. Smaller means fewer materials and less of whatever related pollution and other problems might be associated with their manufacture and installation. It also means more soil and vegetation left undisturbed, less maintenance, and, not insignificantly, less money expended. The same rationale is true for outdoor rooms, but the argument goes even further. Since the idea of an outdoor room is to be outdoors, the room itself should be only as big as it needs to be before transitioning to the “real” outdoors. An outdoor kitchen should transition smoothly to a kitchen garden, for example.

The best deck is no deck

Outdoor floors are exposed to a lot more moisture than indoor floors. Even a covered deck is going to get hit by rain or snow, let alone lots of water vapor from fluctuating humidity levels. Therefore, if your outdoor room is on the first floor, my advice is not to build a deck at all. Place your floor right on the ground by building a patio out of stone, slate, brick or some other variant. Yes, this will most likely cost more, but it will also last much longer and  won’t require the same maintenance. Patios can also be designed to slope gradually in ways that can eliminate steps and create smoother transitions between inside and out.

Local lumber

Obviously, there are situations in which decks will make more sense than patios. What should we build them out of? Until a few years ago, the common wisdom was to use wood that was saturated under pressure with a solution containing chromium, copper, and arsenic. For some reason, it took a while to determine that the known poison arsenic is still a poison when injected into wood, but eventually arsenic was taken out of the mix. Now, the pressure treating solution of choice seems to be copper oxide and “a quaternary ammonium compound”. Call me a Nervous Nellie, but I’m not comforted by this.

Enter locust tree, stage right. Locust is an incredibly dense wood that is naturally resistant to water penetration and insects. It grows straight and fast and is fairly abundant in our region, sometimes even considered a “weed tree” because it grows in damaged soils and is somewhat scraggly. Locust is a great material to use for both the framing and flooring of decks. The downside is that locust isn’t a huge tree and can be rough on saw blades, two traits that don’t put it on top of the favorites list for saw mills. (You can forget about ever finding it at Home Depot.) That means you may have to look around a bit to find some.  However, I’m sure that the more we ask for it, the more our local mills will want to carry it. One caveat: like any wood species, locust has its unique characteristics. Make sure that whoever is building your deck knows about locust or does some research on how to work with it.

Composite materials

There are a variety of “composite decking” materials presently being manufactured. Most contain recycled wood dust and either polyethylene or polypropylene plastic. Polyethylene is what grocery bags and milk jugs are made of and at least one manufacturer uses only recycled plastic from these sources. Some of these products contain PVC, others have anti-microbial and anti-fungal agents. To my ear, that translates to “against carbon based life forms”, a group that includes humans, so I tend to steer away from products proudly proclaiming that trait.

Composites won’t rot like wood and most have a gritty texture that gives them good foot traction. I don’t know of any of these products that have the structural strength to be used as deck framing. We’ve had good luck with some composites, so I think that locust framing with high recycled content composite decking without anti-anythings is a good combination for building a deck.

Oops, the long-winded blowhard alarm just went off. I’ve gone over my column word count allotment once again. One last comment: No matter what material you use, make sure that your outdoor floor slopes gently away from the house, so that water will too.

Until next month, remember it’s all good…except for the bad stuff.

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What is Natural Building, Or “Do I Have to Wear Dreadlocks to Build with Straw Bales?”

April 22nd, 2010 by Clarke

This article by Clarke Snell originally appeared in the New Life Journal.

Column redux: two months ago I delved into straw; last month I riffed on dirt. Add locally harvested wood, some stone, maybe a little bamboo, an enthusiastic attitude, and we are squarely in the realm of “natural building”. What’s it all about?

Before I go any further, I need to make a full disclosure: I took a lot of philosophy in college. Red flag! That means that words like “natural” really trip me up. What is natural? Some might say that “natural” simply means that which is in tune with nature. But aren’t humans natural, so wouldn’t anything we do be natural, too? I’m sure the makers of vinyl wall coverings will be happy to hear it.

Another approach is to say that natural building uses natural materials and that natural materials are those that are locally harvested and minimally processed. Okay, then is gravel natural? It’s local, durable, and doesn’t require a huge amount of energy to harvest. However, gathering it completely destroys the specific, local ecosystem from whence it comes. (Have you ever visited a quarry?)

Yet another spiel would be that natural is synonymous with indigenous. What is the indigenous building system for our area? Some variant on European wood construction, the wigwam or other native American technique? How about the rabbit hole or bird’s nest? Even if we could agree upon the representative historical composite system, what meaning would it have for us? Let’s face it, we aren’t indigenous ourselves.

My point here is that “natural” only has meaning when given a context. It used to be that the context was distinctly local. A small group of people using locally harvested materials interacting with a specific culture and single annual climatic cycle. Today our context is global. There are lots of reasons: billions instead of millions of people, communication in seconds rather days, travel in hours rather than months. People now travel from the Philippines to Dubai to get a job behind the counter at Starbucks. The CO2 my woodstove in WNC or your car in Atlanta puts off today may change the climate in India tomorrow.

To my mind, that means that being natural these days is a lot more complicated. When it comes to buildings, it can’t simply mean using local materials anymore. It has to mean taking the full impact of a building and the lifestyle it serves into account. There simply are no easy answers. All of us heading back to the proverbial woods isn’t a feasible option. How would 3 billion small huts each with it’s own fire for cooking and heating impact the global climate? How long would the burnable cellulose hold out? On the other hand, it’s hard to even use the word “natural” in the context that most of the human population now resides: the city. What is the natural way to build for people in a huge city that contains no indigenous resources for building?

This line of thought has led me to try and keep an open mind as I’m looking at the resources available for building. I’ve accepted that human dwellings have an impact, so my goal is to create the best building with the smallest impact. If in the full life-cycle of the building that means using some mass-produced materials, high tech systems, and heavy machinery, then I’m all for it.

It’s interesting then that even in this context, my focus is still on what are traditionally called “natural materials”. Part of the reason is the typical rationale that they are locally available and therefore create less pollution in harvesting, manufacture, transport, and installation (have a lower embodied energy). Just as importantly, though, they often provide much greater design flexibility than their modern counterparts.

Let’s take straw and dirt for example. We can use these two simple materials combined in different ratios and configurations to deal with a variety of different specific situations. Configured as a bale, straw can provide incredible insulation. Mixed with a clay/sand soil, the result is cob, a simple material with amazing structural strength. A different mix of the same ingredients creates clay-slip straw with more insulation than cob and more water resistance than bales. What’s more, all of these incarnations can vary easily in width and height and therefore don’t need to fit into cavities of predetermined size. This flexibility is important in the real (i.e. natural) world because every site and even every wall on every site is in some ways unique. Materials that can be modified and tweaked to deal with different incarnations of sun, water, wind, and life forms (mold and insects, for example) are often easier to match to a given real world scenario. It’s difficult to design mass-produced materials to have that kind of flexibility.

In the end, then, I wonder if the whole “natural” moniker isn’t really just confusing the issue. If we are trying to create buildings that work more efficiently with the realities of a give site, then materials and techniques commonly called “natural” can stand alone as solid, practical choices toward that end. You may not like dreadlocks. I may not like baseball caps. That doesn’t mean that we both shouldn’t consider incorporating some straw and dirt into the next building we build or have built.

(By the way, if you want to get into some down and dirty details on this topic, I’m teaching a WNC Green Building Council seminar on July 18th called “Natural Building: What Is It? How Do You Do It? Why Would You Do It?” Call the WNCGBC or check out this link for more info: http://www.wncgbc.org.)

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Firewood: Don’t Burn It, Build With It

April 22nd, 2010 by Clarke

This article by Clarke Snell was originally published in the New Life Journal.

Western North Carolina is becoming an incubator for green and natural building. As far as green building goes, homes built to Healthy Built Home standards have skyrocketed. We’re also well stocked with the latest cutting edge technologies and building concepts. For example though they were rare only five or ten years ago, you pretty much can’t shake a stick without hitting a hydronic in-floor heating system these days. Solar hot water is WAY back in, too, I’m happy to say. On the natural building side, it’s a real smorgasbord around here. We’ve got a number of code approved straw bale houses in several area counties. I know of two Earthships (a housing system that uses old tires packed with dirt as the wall system) in good old Madison County for god’s sake. We’ve got some cob, adobe, clay-slip straw, and the other earth/straw permutations around, too, though they seem to be more often built below the code radar than not. Conspicuously absent from our collection has been cordwood construction….until now. Toby Crawley and Maria Muscarella are nearing completion on a code approved cordwood house in Leicester. Let’s check it out.

What is Cordwood Construction?

Cordwood is firewood: air-dried, unmilled wood cut to length. Cordwood construction (often called “cordwood masonry”) is a technique for building walls with firewood. In the most basic approach, sticks of wood are placed in two beds of mortar separated by a space, usually several inches wide, which is then filled with some kind of loose insulation such as sawdust or vermiculite. (PHOTO). There are many possible mortar mixes. One popular mix contains sand, wet sawdust, lime, and Portland cement. Another uses lime and sand. Another paper pulp. Yet another simply clay, sand, and straw (cob). Cordwood walls can be designed to carry roof loads or they can be installed in combination with some form of post and beam structure. Since wood can shrink or swell, species and drying time are variables that are often debated by cordwood enthusiasts.

Cordwood Pros, Cons, and Performance

Pros: If you live in the forest, then the main advantage of cordwood is obvious: it’s an abundant, locally available, affordable building material. If you choose to go with a cob mortar and sawdust insulation, you could collect almost all of your wall volume from your building site. That’s saying something these days! In addition, laying cordwood requires only basic tools and simple skills. Once laid, cordwood walls require no additional finish such as drywall or wallpaper with sea shells on it. (Note: I’m only talking about the cordwood portion of the construction here. You still need a foundation, window and door framing, a roof system, heating and cooling strategies and systems, and all the other things that make a house a complex animal.)

Cons: Laying cordwood is a lot of hard, physical work. It also takes a lot of forethought in terms of cutting and drying the wood. (It’s a good idea to let cut and split wood air-dry under cover for at least a year before using in a wall.) In addition, the exposed end-grain of each piece of wood facing toward the exterior is susceptible to water infiltration and therefore mold, insects, and other damaging forces. Good design such as a proper foundation and good roof overhangs can go a long way to solving this issue. For me, perhaps the main functional cordwood con is wood shrinkage which can cause gaps and cracks that lead to air infiltration and even separation of cordwood from the mortar.

Performance: Comparing cordwood’s thermal performance to a more conventional wall system is difficult to generalize and beyond the scope of this column. However, I will say that since cordwood is made on site, it’s thermal performance can be adjusted to suit the specifics of the house project it is serving. The thicker the wall, the better it will resist the flow of heat, so you can theoretically generate the performance you need by adjusting wall thickness. In colder climates, an option for increasing thermal performance is double wall cordwood masonry, a system employing two cordwood walls separated by a space filled with insulation. Wood is both a decent insulator and a good thermal mass, so it is competent at both resisting heat flow and holding heat. Another potential performance plus for cordwood is it’s hygroscopic nature…it’s ability to take on and give off water vapor in response to changes in humidity levels. This trait theoretically helps wood to balance indoor humidity levels and therefore potentially improve indoor air quality.

Toby and Maria’s House

As someone who has been hangin’ around the natural building water cooler for a number of years, I have to say that I’m always skeptical when I hear about the next wave of novice owner builders taking a shot at home construction. Sometimes it works out great and sometimes…well it’s a disaster. I’m happy to report that Toby and Maria are doing a good job and look like they are going to make it through intact. In my opinion, their secret to success has been (1) an initially somewhat realistic budget and (2) the financial flexibility to go well over their initially somewhat realistic budget.

After doing their research and checking out a variety of options, Toby and Maria chose cordwood over other “natural” building options because they thought they could muster the skills and reasoned that cordwood could pass code in the area. This turned out to be true probably mainly because they chose a post and beam structure with cordwood infill. The post and beam construction was stamped by a structural engineer leaving the cordwood infill with no official structural role. They cut cordwood from poplar harvested on their property and bought most of the rest of the framing lumber from a local mill. They salvaged hardwood floor from a dumpster (it looks great!) and bought most of their doors and windows from Habitat for Humanity.

The approximately 1,400 square foot building is 16-sided and roughly circular. It will have a living roof planted with sedums. The north section of the first floor and the small second floor are wood framed and insulated with Icynene spray foam leaving roughly the east, south, and west areas of the first floor in cordwood. Though they are hooked up to and existing well and septic system and have a flush toilet, Toby, Maria and family plan to continue using their sawdust toilet and composting their humanure for use in the garden. (Yeah, baby! See my rant against flush toilets in other of my writings or just stop me on the street to get an earful.) They have hydronic in-floor heating fed only by solar collectors, i.e. there is no boiler back-up and therefore no petroleum based fuel input. The back-up heat source is a high efficiency wood stove. Last, but not least, they are using Earthpaint finishes throughout the building. (If you don’t know about local paint and finish manufacturer, Earthpaint, get with it already!)

If you want more information, Toby and Maria have graciously agreed to supply a contact email address (tcrawley@gmail.com). They still have some cordwood to lay, so get in on the next cordwood party! As for me, I’m always looking to deepen my knowledge of the local natural and extreme green building scene, so don’t hesitate to send me leads and contact info for interesting projects at clarke@thinkgreenbuilding.com. Until next month, keep it green.

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Is Wood Good? A Look at Burning Wood for Heat

April 22nd, 2010 by Clarke

This article by Clarke Snell originally appeared in the New Life Journal.

It’s winter, so I’m thinking a lot about wood. That’s because it’s a major strand in my life-line this time of year. I’m lucky enough to live in a house that is heated by a combination of direct sunlight and wood collected basically from my back yard. In a world that I am increasingly unable to grasp, it’s always a centering, empowering experience to warm myself with wood that I’ve cut, split, and hauled with my own hands.

A sensible question, though, is whether it’s environmentally responsible to burn wood for heat. The preamble to an answer to this question is that the “green” approach to heating has to start with a very well-insulated, weatherized building that maximizes the heating potential of the sun through passive and active solar design (see last month’s column for more info). These strategies will greatly reduce the amount of extra heat we’ll need in the building.

With that said, there are two basic environmental issues to consider: management of natural resources and pollution. As a resource, wood is both locally available and renewable. When you compare fighting wars over dwindling oil reserves to taking a chainsaw into your back yard, wood seems the clear winner. To my mind, IF (and this is a big IF) the wood is harvested in a sustainable fashion, then burning wood is a smart choice from the point of view of natural resource management.

That leaves the question of pollution. Is wood a clean burning fuel? The answer depends on how you burn it. To understand what I mean, we need a quick science lesson. (Full disclosure: I am not a combustion scientist, nor have I played one on TV.)

Combustion or “burning” is the chemical reaction between a heated substance (fuel) and oxygen. In the case of wood, there are three stages of combustion. In the first stage, wood heats up to the point that interior moisture turns to steam. This process actually consumes heat, so we are no closer to warming our feet at this point. With the water gone, though, the wood can get hotter and begins to vaporize releasing gases, better known as “smoke” to us laypeople. If the temperature is hot enough, this smoke will burn releasing heat in the process. After the gases have been released, what’s left is called “char” which is basically a pile of almost pure carbon. In the presence of enough heat and oxygen this carbon will combine with oxygen to produce carbon dioxide and release more heat.

Carbon dioxide?! Isn’t that a greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming? Yes, it is. The fact is that all types of combustion (whether coal, oil, gas, etc.) produce carbon dioxide. However, there is a difference. Trees take in carbon dioxide as they grow. When they die, fall, and decompose in the forest, they expel this carbon dioxide. If you burn wood, that same carbon dioxide is released, so theoretically there’s no global warming difference between letting wood decay and burning it. (The reality is, as usual, a bit more complicated, but, hey, remember I’m no combustion scientist.) On the other hand, the CO2 released from burning petroleum is CO2 that plants took in millions of years ago and has been sequestered all that time in the ground. Therefore, burning petroleum brings additional CO2 into the picture, and consequently contributes to human induced global warming.

If we accept this carbon dioxide argument, then how clean wood burns and how much of it’s potential energy is converted to heat is simply a function of how completely it combusts. If smoke is allowed to float away without combusting, the result is creosote and a bunch of nasty particulates that can pollute indoor and outdoor air. If the “char” doesn’t completely combust, the result is unburnt char and by-product carbon monoxide which as we all know is a poisonous gas. To avoid these environmental pitfalls, we need to (1) create enough heat and (2) contain the fuel.

Wet wood is the enemy of creating heat. A lot of energy is wasted burning off water which keeps temperatures low and therefore allows smoke to escape without burning.  The first step, then, regardless of stove type is to use well seasoned (dry) wood. Next, we need enough oxygen. Campfires burn well because they have access to plenty of oxygen. The problem is that the fire is on the bottom while vaporizing gases quickly rise away from the flames, therefore a lot of fuel just floats away unburned. We need to contain those gases in a heated environment so that they ignite after they rise away from the flames. Next, after the gases have burnt off, we need to keep burning the char hot enough to make sure minimal carbon monoxide is created. Finally, we have to find a way to store most of the heat off of this now incredibly hot, efficiently burning fire. If not we’ll quickly overheat our house.

Since we are geniuses, humans have created stove designs that solve these problems. In my opinion, the best of these are generically called “masonry wood heaters”. Though there are a number of variations, the basic idea is to burn wood hot and fast in a stove made of dense masonry materials (brick and stone) that then can absorb the heat and slowly release it into the house over many hours.

My favorite design is the “contraflow heater”. In this stove, wood is stacked log cabin style in a tall firebox made of firebrick with ample air intake basically creating an enclosed campfire. As smoke rises off the fire, it is confined and therefore compressed in a secondary combustion chamber where it ignites. Hot air from this combustion leaves the chamber at both ends and then travels back down the sides of the stove in channels created by another layer of brick that surrounds the stove. The air then enters the bottom of the chimney and moves out of the house. The brick soaks up much of the heat from the air as it travels up and then back down through the stove. Meanwhile back in the firebox, the char continues to combust in an environment of ample air and heat. After a couple of hours when combustion is complete, the stove damper and air intake is closed to prevent air movement out the chimney and the stove then slowly radiates its stored heat into the house for up to 24 hours. The result is an extremely efficient burn with very low particulates and a comfortable, even radiant heat.

As with all things, there are downsides. For one, masonry heaters are expensive and heavy, requiring a solid foundation to sit on. They also require a lifestyle adjustment over conventional heating sources. They heat up slowly, so you have to plan ahead if the stove has cooled down. In other words, no cranking up the thermostat when you get home from work.

Luckily, other wood stove technologies approximate the advantages of a masonry heater. New metal stoves have advanced catalytic combusters and/or ingenious air intake and injection strategies. Some metal stoves incorporate soapstone or other mass to allow for some amount of heat storage.

On the other hand, as I said earlier, there’s a bad way to burn wood. Metal stoves that are two large for the space or poorly designed require that you starve the fire to prevent overheating. Smoldering a log in an old damped down cast iron stove creates massive amounts of particulates and only turns about 25% of the wood into useful heat compared to 75% or more for a masonry stove. A roaring fire in an old-school fireplace is even worse, turning an estimated 0% (yes, you read that right) to 15% of the wood fuel into useful heat. If you’ve got an old metal stove, either modify it to include an air to air heat exchanger (here’s a link to show you how: http://www.aprovecho.org/), or get rid of it. Sell it for scrap or use it for yard art, but don’t pass it on to another user. If you are buying a metal wood stove, make sure that it is EPA approved (labeled EPA II).

To learn more about masonry wood stoves, check out the Masonry Heaters Association of North America. Their website is http://mha-net.org/html/library.htm. To further research metal wood stoves, first peruse this government website (http://www.epa.gov/woodstoves/index.html) so that you can impress your local wood stove dealer with some intelligent questions.

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Building Fundamentals: Renewable Energy, a Discussion with Ole Sorensen

April 22nd, 2010 by Clarke

This article by Clarke Snell was originally printed in the New Life Journal.

When we meet with clients in our office for the first time to discuss their desires for a “green” house design, they seldom talk about pivotal but boring things like insulation levels or conscientious weatherization detailing. In fact they very often know very little about what might make the house itself “green”.  Invariably, though, they do discuss alternatives to conventional energy production. Solar electricity, hydronic in-floor heating, and solar hot water are almost always mentioned. That’s a good thing because our buildings are responsible for the lion’s share of our societal energy use and consequently play a huge role in our present pollution and environmental degradation problems. To help us all get a bead on our energy use options,  I sat down recently with Ole Sorensen of Solar Dynamics, a renewable energy system design and installation company based in Asheville.

Most of our clients say they want to take advantage of alternative energy technologies, but in my experience few know what that really means. What is “alternative energy”?

I try to stay away from the word “alternative”. To me “alternative energy” is coal and propane. In the final analysis, the only energy sources that make sense, the ones that need to be our primary sources, are those that can be part of a sustainable lifestyle. My ultimate goal is sustainability. A sustainable energy source is one that can be continually renewed. In other words, things that we don’t have to worry about running out of. As it turns out, almost all renewable energy on this planet comes from the sun. Every ½ hour enough energy from the sun hits the earth’s surface to power human civilization for a year. In other words, we don’t even need to be efficient, we just need to commit to tapping this basically infinite resource in it’s various forms.

The most basic solar energy is direct sunlight which can be used to heat buildings through passive solar design. Direct sunlight can also be used to heat water or some other liquid to create domestic hot water and energy for in-floor hydronic heating. We can also turn that same sunlight into electricity using photovoltaics. Wind-power and hydro-power are also forms of electricity whose power source is the sun. The sun heats air to, in combination with the rotation of the earth, create wind. The sun also evaporates water to create rain and other precipitation, the force that creates a constant cycle of falling water on the planet. We use both wind and falling water to turn turbines that create electricity. The energy held within ocean waves is another largely untapped source of solar energy that is starting to be commercialized for electricity production.

There is constant and exciting innovation in the world of renewable energy technology. However the tech stuff is only half of the equation to creating a sustainable approach to energy. The other part is lifestyle adjustment. Billy Jonas has an environmental song that my kids and I love that repeats the line, “It all comes from the groun-duh.” It’s a basic and profound point. All we have is this one earth. Duh. We simply have to find a balance between what we take and what we leave behind. I’ve seen statistics claiming that if everyone lived like we do in the US, we’d need five planets. Talk about unsustainable!

This is a point that really scares me. I know that we in the US are out of control in terms of our energy consumption and then it seems like the rest of the world is frantically trying to catch up with us. There just isn’t enough planet to go around. How do you see us getting out of this mess?

To illustrate let me tell you a story from my own life. I’m from Denmark and started out in a highly academic environment. I then decided to move into boat building. I couldn’t get my fellow classmates to approach the process academically. We had a hard time communicating. My teacher pointed out to me that my classmates and I were talking two different languages and asked me the question, “Who would have the easier time changing their language, you or them?” I realized that it was up to me to bridge the gap because my background gave me the skills.

I see our present energy and environmental problems in the same way. The rich industrialized countries are the ones using the most energy and creating the most pollution. We’re also the ones with the technology and resources to find sustainable solutions. It’s up to us to solve this problem, to change our language so to speak. Rather than having poorer countries struggling to catch up to us in our present consumption patterns, which is simply impossible, we can show the way for them to utilize renewable energy to prosper sustainably. The concept is not that hard to grasp. We are the ones who have the knowledge and are using the excess. It’s up to us to create enough for others. The wonderful thing is that we actually have the know-how to make this happen if we have the will.

As someone who has lived in this country almost all my life, that’s a little hard to imagine. Our whole paradigm is based on trying to get ahead, seemingly at any cost. How do we go about changing the paradigm. How do we go from being the problem to solving it?

We are already in the middle of the paradigm shift. It’s you and I and all our fellow citizens who create change and most people today want sustainable energy. There is a demand for it. The problem is that in many cases the solutions are not available to everyone because they are too expensive. Since I got into this business, PV (solar electric) panels have gone from 12 to 20% efficiency. In other words, panels now transform into electricity 20% of the solar energy that hits them. That’s an amazing technological improvement in a short time, but clearly there is a lot more energy there for us to capture. We simply need more research and development money to reap even greater improvements in efficiency that will allow prices to come down even further. If we really got behind renewables, put our money where our mouth is so to speak, we could be getting a lot more and paying a lot less.

Another problem is one of scale. As with most things, the smaller the system, the more you pay per unit. PV is just too expensive for most people to put on their houses right now, that’s why most PV installations are commercial. It’s the same with wind power. Commercial wind companies won’t even consider a project unless it’s in the 10 to 20 million dollar range. Smaller and the economics just don’t add up. I think we need more options than simply residential and large commercial. We need community and neighborhood renewable power plants, large enough so that they are affordable but not so large that we necessarily have to wait for the large power companies to get on board.

Countries with high percentages of renewable energy, Denmark for example produces about 20% of its electricity demand from wind, are doing things like this. They have some residential and apartment buildings, but also a lot of larger commercial projects. Germany has a single PV array covering the equivalent of 11 soccer fields. Another array stretches more than ½ mile along the highway to the Munich airport. Germany made a very conscious decision in the 1990’s to go solar. To put it simply, people there were willing to pay more to move toward sustainability and that created the political will to get the government involved. That’s what we need in this county. We need to step up to the plate in support of renewables and then hold our government accountable to make a meaningful transition to renewable energy.

Okay, so far you’ve been talking about the big picture which is of course very important, but it can also be a formula for inaction because we tend to feel overwhelmed with the scale of the problem. It seems that thinking globally and acting locally really fits in this context. You started your business to be part of the solution and your solution is making renewable energy available to residential customers. How does someone go about making renewable energy a part of their daily life, in other words a part of their present or planned house?

When someone comes to me, the first thing we do is discuss their dream. Every situation is unique and depends on a client’s energy consumption, square footage, sun or wind exposure, budget, and current tax credits. Honestly, people almost always begin with dreams of a lot of technology, then we start talking price and many people back off. We then look in their budget for the thing that will make the biggest difference. I like to look at it in terms of a “sustainability budget”. You budget for other things, why not sustainability. Let’s say you have $15,000 in your sustainability budget. In other words, you want to invest $15,000 now in moving toward energy sustainability. You’ll get this money back in utility bill savings over time, but it’s an upfront expenditure. What’s the best way to spend that money?

Well, energy production isn’t the first thing to consider. That’s my dilemma as a renewable energy installer. I need to keep in business, but I also have a responsibility to the planet and society. So when someone comes to me with limited funds, I tell them first to reduce their energy needs by building smaller and by creating an efficient building envelope, in other words installing more insulation and paying attention to weatherization. Next, I tell them to choose construction methods that will create a long-lasting durable building that won’t require a lot  of maintenance. Then we talk about reducing energy usage because the less energy you use, the more affordable your renewable energy system will be.

At this point we’re ready to talk about energy. Let’s go back to the original example of a modest $15,000 sustainability budget. My suggestion would be to spend $8,000 for additional insulation and $7,000 for a quality solar hot water system. You’ll get more bang for your buck this way than spending the $15,000 on a solar electric system. Don’t get me wrong. I applaud and support clients who make a commitment to PV. I’m just realistic that for the majority of people right now there are more cost effective ways to get the same positive environmental effects. If a client can’t afford PV, then my “best of both worlds” solution here is to install solar hot water and plan for an eventual PV system by putting in conduit and other inexpensive infrastructure as part of the initial construction process. If the budget just really can’t support even solar hot water, we can also install transmission lines in the wall and take other steps to make the eventual installation easy, efficient, and more cost effective. In my opinion, a solar hot water rough-in should be as important as a front door in new construction.

What about hydronic in-floor heating. Why do you install these systems?

Hydronic heating can use either radiators or can be set in a slab or under a floor. These systems, especially the in-floor variety, are sustainable because they are incredibly efficient. The boilers I use are 97% efficient and don’t require energy hog fans as with air source systems. In addition, hydronics can easily utilize direct solar radiation as a heat input. The same solar hot water heating system we’ve been discussing can do double duty as a heat source for your radiant heating system. In my opinion, hydronic heating has the lowest environmental impact of any heating system available, including burning wood. Of course, a big selling point for hydronics is comfort. In-floor hydronic heat creates a wonderful, mellow heat that doesn’t dry the air or make noise while it’s running.

One of the common complaints I hear about renewable energy systems is that the exposed machinery is “ugly”. What’s your response to that criticism?

Personally, I can get ruthless when it comes to aesthetics. If the most efficient car in the world looked like a piece of cheese, I’d drive a piece of cheese. Of course, as a company we are sensitive to and try to accommodate the aesthetic needs of our clients. To give solar panels as an example, at our latitude and with most roof pitches, it is going to be more efficient to raise roof-mounted panels at an angle to the roof. However, sometimes customers want their panels to lie flat on the roof because they feel it looks better. If our analysis tells us that this will result in only an insignificant reduction in system efficiency, we’re happy to do it. If, on the other hand, that isn’t the case, then we feel the need to stand our ground and install the panels at an angle to the roof. In the end, this always results in a much happier customer. We have to hold on to the big picture: our goal of sustainability. If it means getting over a perception of what you consider to be ugly, then so be it.

Here’s another example. One of our wind power customers had a hard time convincing his neighbors and the press that the wind turbine he planned to install wouldn’t be an eye sore. It wasn’t until we finished the installation that they realized what a simple, eloquent machine this was and not as huge as they imagined in their minds. One journalist even apologized and wrote a second positive article about it. Education is the key. When people complain about how ridge-top wind-power systems will adversely effect their “view shed”, I tell them that there won’t be a view shed without wind-power. In the last few years, there has been a marked deterioration in air quality even in our rural area. That’s not haze, people, that’s smog.

I like to say that sustainability and denial are archenemies. They just can’t work together. We have to decide to let go of our denial and embrace sustainability. To contact Ole and for more information on Solar Dynamics:

Phone: 828-665-8507 or 828-231-9106

Email: ole@solardynamicsnc.com

Web: http://solardynamicsnc.com

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Health and Community Design: Applying Ecology to the Urban Environment

April 21st, 2010 by Clarke

This article by Michael Figura was first published in the New Life Journal.

Ecology theory states that if an animal population is unhealthy, one of the main contributing factors to the species’ poor health is a damaged habitat.  Improvements in an animal’s habitat almost always lead to an improvement in the health of that species.

We humans tend to forget that we are animals too.  By applying the critical lens of ecology to humanity and sampling the health of our own population, we can learn much about the state of our habitat.

The health of our population is approaching disastrous.  Here are some sobering statistics on the health of our population (Source: Eat Smart, Move More):

  • Over half of American adults are overweight or obese
  • Nearly two out of every three North Carolina adults are either overweight or obese
  • 53% of buys and 48% of girls between the ages of 2-19 are overweight or obese in North Carolina
  • Being overweight or obese increases the risk of many chronic diseases including heart disease, diabetes and some cancers.

If the stat’s above don’t shock you, consider (Source: Eat Smart, Move More):

  • Obesity among North Carolina adults has more than doubled between 1990-2006
  • For the first time in nearly two centuries, the current generation of American children may have a shorter life expectancy than their parents.

Applying the theory in ecology that our habitat must be a contributing factor to our declining health, we need to collectively ask ourselves what has happened that caused this dire situation.

Eat Smart, Move More is a North Carolina movement that has asked this question.  Eat Smart, Move More is made up of a experts in the fields of medicine, urban planning, nutrition, fitness, and many more.  A summary of their conclusions to the problems and solutions to our current health crisis are listed below.

Our Community Design

In an attempt to make our lives easier, we have removed many of the daily opportunities to move our bodies.  Specifically, we have removed the activity that we get through walking and biking as a means of transportation.  This is evidenced by the fact that 10% of children walk to school today compared to 80% during their parent’s generation (Source: Eat Smart, Move More).

By and large, our neighborhoods and communities are built so that walking and biking are not safe alternatives to riding in a car.  Not only are walking and biking no longer safe, but they are long longer feasible because of the increased spatial separation between our destinations.  Traditional cities have a mix of uses within a tight proximity to each other, which allows for short trips that can be made on foot or with a bike.  Contemporary cities are spread out and have large distances between buildings and between residential, commercial, office and institutional uses.

Redesigning our cities to foster walkability and bikability will largely improve our health.  Eat Smart, Move More found that residents in highly walkable neighborhoods engage in 70 minutes more activity per week than residents in low walkable neighborhoods.  Consider that adults need at least 30 minutes of physical activity daily and children need at least 60 minutes of exercise per day.  Because most health benefits from exercise are cumulative and do not need to be done at one time, walking and biking are great ways to get physical activity during a person’s daily routine.

Our Food

The number of fast-food outlets has dramatically increased over the past two decades. Every day, one in four Americans eats a fast-food meal, which is not surprising since the number of fast-food establishments in the country has increased from 70,000 in 1970 to almost 200,000 today (Source: Eat Smart, Move More).

We are eating more meals away from home in general.  Eating away from home often means eating meals that are high in calories and fat.   In schools, high-fat, high-sugar foods are sold to children in competition with the healthy school lunch.

Americans’ consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages continues to rise. The calories from soda are substantially void of nutrition.  There are enough soft drinks produced in the U.S. to supply every citizen with 14 ounces of soda per day.

Focusing on healthy eating habits will largely improve our health.  Nutrition education in schools, in the work place, and at home is a crucial component to getting us on healthy diets.   Growing food in urban areas can also help put people in touch with real food (as opposed to manufactured food).  More restrictive tools to change eating habits are to place high taxes on unhealthy foods and to restrict unhealthy foods in schools and in public buildings.

Our Television

Americans now spend an average of four hours each day, inactive, sitting in front of the television (Source: Eat Smart, Move More).  There is significant advertising of high-fat, high-calorie foods on television. Many of these ads are aimed directly at children.

Weaning people from watching too much TV is a difficult task.  Offering safe and healthy active alternatives to TV can help to solve this dilemma.  Communities that create more indoor and outdoor public parks, promote after school activities, and promote adult activities can help get people out of their TV rooms.  Public campaigns to de-glamorize TV culture and instead promote active living can also help.

Conclusion

We each have a responsibility to help transform our cities into places where physical activity and a healthy connection to food are part of our daily routines.  I urge you to set a good example of how to live a healthy lifestyle with your everyday actions.  If you are an activist, consider focusing your work on collaborating with your local government to create and codify community designs that support healthy living.

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Gentrification and Smart Growth

April 21st, 2010 by Clarke

This article by Michael Figura was first published in the New Life Journal.

“The majority of the stores, the 99-cent stores, they’re gone.  The Laundromat on the corner is gone. The bodegas are gone. There’s large delis now. What had been two for $1 is now one for $3. My neighbor is a beer drinker, and he drinks inexpensive beer, Old English or Colt 45 or Coors — you can’t even buy that in the stores. The stores have imported beers from Germany. The foods being sold — feta cheese instead of sharp Cheddar cheese. That’s a whole other world.” – Gwen Walker, 55, a longtime resident of the General Grant Houses in West Harlem. NY Times “Mixed Feelings as Change Overtakes 125th St” June 13, 2008

Gentrification occurs when one class of people with a higher income moves into an urban area and displaces a poorer class of people.  Because we still have large economic disparities between races in the United States, gentrification usually involves white people displacing minorities, but at its basic level, gentrification is about one class with more financial power and resources displacing another group of lesser means.  Gentrification can be identified by a large out-migration of an area’s long-time residents and an in-migration of a new class of people with higher incomes.

Gentrification occurs when trendsetters such as artists, whose upbringing is of middle and upper class, start moving into poor urban neighborhoods.  Soon after trendsetters move into these neighborhoods, the perception about those areas by the mainstream middle and upper classes improves.   The mainstream middle and upper classes “rediscover” the benefits of city living, such as shorter commutes, a walking lifestyle, efficient public transit, and an urban social scene.  As the mainstream moves in, real estate becomes much more expensive and the existing community is priced out.

Prior to the mainstream moving into poorer urban areas, there is usually a push from local government to decrease crime and increase public investment, as local governments encourage the arrival of wealth and the prospect of higher property tax revenue.    While decreasing crime and increasing public investment are good goals, those goals are usually met by an ousting of long time residents, who move out because of a quick escalation in rent.  (www.wsws.org “The Cincinnati riots and the class divide in America”).   Crime is decreased when gentrification occurs, but it is decreased through a penal system that is responsible for putting more young black males in prison than in college (www.justicepolicy.org).  Broad social reform and community building are often not the agents of institutional change for improving poor urban neighborhoods.  Thus, gentrification often brings a very negative reaction from the existing neighborhoods.

Gentrification harms people that have the fewest resources in our society by changing their living conditions without giving them resources to empower themselves.   Gentrification exacerbates existing class and racial problems that have been present since the inception of our cities.  The middle and upper classes were able to escape and forget about these urban problems with the “white flight” to the suburbs of the late 20th century.  With a return to city living, these problems are now being brought to the forefront.

The smart growth principles of urban living that are being encouraged by city planners, environmental activists and New Urbanists have the side-effect of encouraging gentrification.  Smart growth calls for a return to urban living by the middle and upper classes that have been propagating suburban sprawl.  The smart growth and New Urbanism community needs to fully acknowledge and work against the negative impacts that come with bringing affluence into economically depressed areas.

There are some that argue that gentrification is a good thing because it solves urban problems, mainly crime and drug related activity.  These people say that a return of affluence can be used in a good way to de-concentrate poverty.  However, free market gentrification re-concentrates poverty elsewhere and displaces these urban problems rather than solving them.  Some communities are now finding that their cities are being revitalized only to see their inner-ring suburbs become the new ghettos (Chicago Reporter Article- “Suburban Ghettos in the Making”).

What can we do to work against gentrification?

Many see the creation of affordable housing in redeveloping areas as a fix for gentrification.   Policies that promote affordable housing, such as rent-control or inclusionary zoning (mandating new development have a certain percentage affordable housing) are part of the solution, but are a far stretch from being the entire solution.  Providing housing affordability is only one aspect of combating gentrification, and by itself, is destined to fail.  Housing affordability needs to be done in conjunction with policies and programs that promote education, job training, a Living Wage, capital for small business start-ups , community building, the provision of equitable social services for all people, and reform of the “justice” system.  By simultaneously working on policies that create reinvestment in our urban communities while also providing for housing and reinvestment in the PEOPLE that make up those communities, the smart growth movement can undo much of the damage to our cities that was done during the “white flight” to suburbs.

If you are someone who would contribute to the gentrification if you moved to an economically depressed neighborhood, then you can play an active role in helping to change the system that ignores gentrification’s negative aspects.  Ways to do that are to volunteer in the community, advocate for more education and reform of the justice system (especially for drug related crime), and to generally spread the gentrification conversation from the housing sector to all sectors.

The gentrification problem is monumental, but through awareness and activism, our society can follow smart growth principles and empower the existing communities that are being gentrified.

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Aging in Place through Sustainable Planning

April 21st, 2010 by Clarke

This article by Michael Figura was first published in the New Life Journal.

The failure of our community design over the last 60 years is evidenced by the popularity of assisted living centers and other senior care facilities throughout America.    According to the AARP, there are over 33,000 assisted living facilities operating in the US today.  These facilities do not provide regular medical services as do nursing homes, and they market themselves as providing more autonomy than nursing homes.  In fact one of their biggest selling points is that they provide transportation and help with “getting around.”

It is not a coincidence that assisted living centers have sprung up at the same time that our society has become especially auto dependent.   The car has become the dominant form of transportation in almost every American city and town, and as a consequence, people who are not comfortable driving or people who simply cannot drive have little or no independence and freedom to go where they please.  For teenagers, this can spark feelings of being trapped and caged.  In the elderly, who have once had the privilege to drive but no longer do drive, the feelings of isolation and loss of freedom are often present.  Thus, our society has unintentionally but ignorantly grown in such a way so that in the last leg of our lives, we need to be carted around like cattle because we do not or cannot drive.

However, the lack of mobility problem is the lesser of the two evils for aging in place that result from an auto oriented lifestyle.   There are insidious health related side effects of a sedentary, auto-oriented existence.   In 1996, the Surgeon General released a report entitled Physical Health and Activity, in which heart disease, muscle and joint weakness, high blood pressure, depression and anxiety, and high obesity levels were listed as the results of too little exercise.  The report stated that “moderately intense physical activity helps to maintain the functional independence of older adults and enhance the quality of life for people of all ages.”   The Surgeon General recognized that people of every age need to get their exercise through their daily routine instead of devoting time specifically for exercise, and that walking and biking as modes of transportation are the critical elements for people getting enough exercise throughout their day.  As further proof of this concept, in a joint study between the Center for Disease Control and the American Institute of Certified Planners, cities with higher rates of walking, biking and transit were linked with lower rates of heart disease and lower blood pressure (Health and Community Design, 2003).

The long and short of it is that having a transportation network that offers viable options besides the car is one the greatest, if not the single greatest, way to achieve aging in place strategies in the United States.  This does not mean that we should sacrifice our quality of life and all live in concrete urban jungles so that we can walk and bike to places.  Rather, as a society, we need to move towards clean and green urban living where nature is weaved throughout the city and where good urban design inspires people to live in town.  By having good urban design, walking and biking become fun and convenient modes of transportation where people not only get exercise, but get to know their neighbors from the daily interaction that occurs when people are not isolated behind the glass and steel of a car.

Unfortunately, the last 60 years has inhibited aging in place because most of America has been developed in a manner that does not foster walking and biking through good urban design.  What can we do as a society to change that?  Becoming involved in the local planning process is a start, but more importantly, we need to begin forsaking the old American Dream of a single family home with a large yard and a white picket fence and replace it with a new American Dream where people can age in place and live healthy, fulfilling lives by residing in an inspiring urban environment.  The best way to support this new American Dream is by following the advice of Mahatma Gandhi to “be the change you want to see in the world” and making your next move into town.

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Creating Balanced Cities with Biomimicry

April 21st, 2010 by Clarke

This article by Michael Figura was first published in the New Life Journal.

Biomimicry is the emulation of nature and its ecosystems to create sustainable human systems.

Using Biomimicry, we can learn a lot from a forest to inform the design of a city.

A forest’s systems are in balance.   A forest receives energy from the sun.  The flora and fauna in the forest have symbiotic relationships with one another- one species using the byproducts of other species for energy and protection.  Different species are mixed together in close proximity to one another to allow an efficient exchange of nutrients.  The flora and fauna in the forest reuse and recycle nutrients in a closed loop system so that the forest does not have to continually extract nutrients from the earth and dedicate land and energy to retiring spent resources.  Because a forest’s systems are in balance with one another, the concept of waste is not present in its ecosystem.

Our cities’ systems are not in balance.  Our cities currently function by getting energy from burning fossil resources, simultaneously creating pollution and destroying the environment from where the fossil resources came.  Our cities’ uses are separated from one another so that large amounts of energy are needed to transfer people, raw materials, finished goods and wasted resources from one area to another.  Our industries and our personal consumption patterns waste resources by extracting fresh materials from the earth, using them for a finite number of times, and then disposing of those resources in landfills.  In many instances, the byproducts of an industry are so toxic that they cannot be used for any other purpose and have to be disposed of in a specially designated landfill.  Frequently, the very products that we create for use are toxic and cannot be recycled back into our industrial metabolism.

Although the challenge to model a city after a forest is daunting, advances are being made on all fronts.  Mass acceptance of carbon dioxide’s impact on climate change is preventing world leaders and multinational corporations from further ignoring renewable energy.  Green building and low impact site development are going mainstream.  The New Urbanism movement has helped revitalize existing cities and has helped develop new town centers throughout the Country by creating an awareness of the benefits of living in urban places (for more information- Congress of New Urbanism- www.cnu.org).

Significant progress in the way that our society uses materials is being made by pioneers such as William McDonough and Michael Braungart, who have championed the Cradle-to-Cradle approach.  Cradle-to-Cradle calls for a second industrial revolution whereby toxins are designed out of products so that materials can have infinite uses.  The approach entails separating materials into the categories of Technical Nutrients and Biological Nutrients.  Technical Nutrients are resources that have been mined from the earth and Biological Nutrients are resources that cycle within the ecosystem.   Technical Nutrients flow in an industrial cycle of use and reuse, analogous to the way an ecosystem cycles Biological Nutrients.  By designing our products to be made of materials that can either be infinitely reused in an industrial cycle or that can be discarded into the larger ecosystem without causing harm, we can continue consumption without wasting resources and damaging the environment (for more information- Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things- William McDonough and Michael Braungart).

As the saying goes, “Think Global-Act Local.”

It is up to each of us to support these positive advancements that are helping our cities function like forests.  To aid in this effort, here are a few lifestyle choices that you can strive to implement:

  • Reduce your energy consumption as much as possible and consume energy that was produced from renewable resources.  The latter can be done by investing in your own renewable energy systems or by purchasing renewable energy from NC Green Power (www.ncgreenpower.org).
  • Try to eliminate waste by purchasing products that are made of Technical Nutrients that can be reused an infinite number of times or that are made of Biological Nutrients that can be incorporated harmlessly back into the larger ecosystem.  Recycle and reuse the Technical Nutrients and compost the Biological Nutrients.
  • If you live and work in a city, live in a pedestrian and/or transit oriented community within that city.
  • If you do not travel much within a city and you prefer to live in the countryside, purchase as much land as possible to place in a conservation easement (10 acres is usually the minimum a land trust will accept).
  • Purchase as many locally grown organic foods and locally made goods as possible.
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